It sounds a little like a coalition of superheroes. The
Midnight Special Law Collective, a nonprofit legal aid organization formed
by Dan Spalding '99 and five other social activists in
Oakland, Calif., teaches legal, yet effective means of protesting to activist
groups
locally and nationwide.

The group's main goal is to "demystify
the law" by
holding such training sessions as "Know Your Rights" and "Non-Violent
Direct Action." Members of the collective are not lawyers, but instead
rely on their network of lawyers and resources to both prepare citizens for
upcoming protests and then defend those who are arrested.

The group had its start in the wake of the World Trade Organization
demonstrations in Seattle in March 2000, helping public defenders
prepare 600 cases for trial;
all in all, only one protester was convicted. Later that year, prior to demonstrations
against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC,
the Collective trained 1,500 activists and staffed around-the-clock
phone lines
for those who were arrested. Spalding himself, who had just become involved
with
the Collective, led three training sessions and became hooked. "At the
end of my two weeks, I realized that I loved Midnight Special and hated my ‘real' job," he
says. "Two months later I quit and moved to Los Angeles to join them.
I think my unofficial role is ‘the guy who keeps in touch with contacts
around the U.S.'"

That's quite a task, considering that the
group is recognized by some of the best-known mass-mobilization units
in the United States
and Canada. Its web site—midnightspecial.net—is "open source," meaning free for anyone to copy, alter, and redistribute.

These days, the group is staying busy locally, reaching
out to high-school students and minority groups who may be unaware of
their
legal rights. The collective published a Know Your Rights
comic book that teaches youth of color how to act if arrested and
jailed by police. A video is in the making,
as is a second comic geared for Hispanic students
that involves Barbara "Bobbie" Lopez '00 of La Raza
Centro Legal.